U.S. boxers win bouts

Press, 26 September 1988, Page 22

U.S. boxers win bouts

NZPA-Reuter Seoul Two American boxers scored convincing inside-the-distance wins yesterday to reach the Olympic quarter-finals. The light-flyweight (48kg), Michael Carbajal, opened the morning session in explosive fashion, flooring Vietnam’s Hien Dang Hieu with a short left hook in the first minute. The dazed Vietnamese, clearly outclassed, then took two standing counts and the referee stopped the bout in one minute 54 seconds of the first round. The lightweight (60kg), Romallis Ellis, had to wait until the second round before nailing Kassim Traore, of Mali, with a flurry of rights and lefts. Traore managed to keep his feet but was forced to take three standing counts, obliging the referee to halt the one-sided bout. “I was kind of debating what hand to take him out with,” Ellis said later. The Canadian lightflyweight powerhouse, Scott Olson, chased Ireland’s Wayne McCullough round the ring for most of the fight to win on a 5-0 points decision. In other lightweight bouts the Bulgarian veteran, Emil Tchuprenski, the 1987 European silver medallist, outboxed Jamaica’s Mark Kennedy for a 5-0 points victory. Tchuprenski will meet Ellis in what is likely to be the top lightweight clash of the quarterfinals. The powerful Soviets lost their second bout of the tournament when Andreas Zuelow, of East Germany, squeezed out a points win over Konstantin Tszyu. In the middleweight (75kg) division, Kieran Joyce rounded off a miserable day for the Irish when he lost a split decision to Uganda’s Franco Wanyama. All three Irish fighters were defeated, leaving only the bantamweight (54kg), John Lowey, to bid for a quarter-final place today.